46th Mersenne Prime Discovered

Congrats UCLA! You found a prime number with more than ten million digits and got yourself a cash prize as well. These are the people who found it. Mersenne primes are of the form 2^p -1, where p is also prime.(Simple example: let p=2 then 2 squared =4 -1 =3, which is prime, and so is 2). Primes get far and few between the larger the number gets. Gimps (Great Internet Mersenne Prime Research) is the organization who hosts the contest, and provides the software for the search. Anyone can join, if you have a computer and internet, you can get in there as well. I've been doing it for many years (thought I was going to nab the ten-million-digit prime).
No matter, I have to gear up old "Bob" (a windows box expressively for this, he used to be a print server, which is an obsolete task now) for the hundred-million digit prime (and a prize of $150,000).
But, c'mon, anyone doing this isn't doing it for the money. Prime number finding is a blood sport.
2^43,112,609 -1 has almost thirteen million digits. The 46th Mersenne Prime.

Park bench in Calabasas, CA

In case you've never heard of her, if you've watched tv in the seventies or eighties or have seen a movie in that time you have seen her. I'll leave you with "It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World."

My Mom Should Be on the Huffington Post

Everybody and their mother said that Sarah Palin resembles Tina Fey. But not my mother. She knew that was way too easy. (Wow, a brunette with glasses.) My mom knows that to get to the bottom of celebrity lookalikes in this campaign, one needs to think outside the box. The following is an actual email from my mom, sent minutes after the conclusion of the Democratic Convention (Google Image Search by me):

Jack, I think there is a resemblance between Haley Joel Osment ( had to look that up on the computer) and Joseph Biden. Of course, Biden is what Haley Joel will look like when he gets older -- 40 years older. Again, I'm thinking of Osment as he was in "Sixth Sense". The computer said he is about 20 years old now, and will be in a Broadway play this coming fall. mom


I can see it! Ah, but my bipartisan mother wasn't done. For minutes after the end of the Republican Convention, she sent me this email:

Jack, Watching McCain deliver his speech I noticed that he resembles Charles Chaplin (Charlie Chaplin) when Chaplin was older with white hair. Hope Hanna doesn't drop too much rain on any one place. See you tomorrow. MOM


Again: Spot on! All you political pundits could learn a thing or two from my dear old mom.

And you'll be happy to know that I had a nice dinner with the folks the next night, and they made it to, and back from, a bar mitzvah in Tarrytown with no real interference from then-Tropical-Storm Hanna.

Found in Closet: part two of four

This one's a messenger bag, with a little banana and an Nike swoosh (?!) below it. Can you identify the banana?



Baloney cat is being really annoying, he keeps purring wildly and laying on the bag.


That's right, it's an Arrested Development bag. How have I never noticed this bag before?
I do feel like I'm listing on ebay at this point, but perhaps this could be a prize for a contest?

John McCain Is So Out of Touch...

...that even his bunting is upside-down.


I've done the Google image searches, folks. Flag bunting. Patriotic bunting. Red, white, and blue bunting. And every one I saw has the flat part at the top, and the curved part down. I'm no physics professor, but I think it has something to do with gravity.

I'm Jack Silbert and I approve of this message.

Greetings from Estonia!

Greetings from Estonia, where everyone pretends to know English and pretends not to know Russian (understandably), and where the World Rogaining Championships are a mere 12 hours away.

Here are some excerpts from the indemnity form I will be required to sign:

1.1.1 The competitor may get lost.

1.1.2 The competitor may fall under attack of wild animals, domestic animals or cattle or get bitten by a viper.

1.1.6 The competitor may get injuries while moving on the terrain, resulting in an inability to move.

1.4.3 The competitor may fall in the mud or bog pool, resulting in inability to move. This may further result in sinking.

And, of course, the major heading:

1.2 Risks associated with buildings and garbage.

Airport Security II (Jack, 0)

People keep coming up to me on the street, imploring, "Certainly something humorous must've happened at security for your return flight, right?" Why yes, in fact, something amusing did occur....

The setting: John Wayne Airport in Santa Ana, California. This is a smaller airport than Newark Liberty International Jingle-Heimer-Schmitt. The security checkpoint does not feature the Smiths Detection Sentinel II (nor the Terahertz Thruvision, which my science-writer pal Nicole says is the industry standard). I was early, there was no line, and I was sailing through.

Not so fast. My Jansport Superbreak backpack (what am I, 18 years old??) didn't pass muster.

"Do you have a liquid in here?" asked agent #1.

Liquid. Liquid. Think, man. Think. Ooh, wait! From the wedding gift bag which I was handed upon checking in at the Best Western. "There's a tube of sunscreen in there," I replied. "I forgot to take it out. You can just toss it."

It wasn't the sunscreen.

The agent removed a white paper bag from my non-Larroquette backpack.

She had discovered a snow globe from that mildly popular Long Beach tourist destination, the Queen Mary.

Now, I've been collecting snow globes since my youth. (I know, I know, you're incredulous: A 39-year-old snow-globe collector who carries a backpack is still single???) So I was saddened by the thought of losing one.

"It's not water inside," explained agent #2. "It's a flammable liquid." And yes, later Googling revealed that, in fact, most snow globes contain… glycerin!

Agent #1, sympathetic to my plight, said that the permissibility rules for snow globes had changed more than once. She suggested checking it as luggage. But that seemed like too much hassle. I'd only owned it for a few hours; I could live without this snow globe. Check it? Chuck it!

Just then, a flash of inspiration struck. Those lonely decades of snow-globe collecting hadn't totally gone to waste. For I knew that the bulk of these cheap, mass-produced, commemorative, plastic, not-usually-globe-shaped objects had a little plastic cork in the bottom. Over the years, I had refilled more than one that had fallen victim to evaporation. (They never quite looked the same afterwards, but how was I to know about the glycerin?)

"Could I… drain it?" I shyly asked.

Agent #1 considered this idea and delivered her verdict. "Sure," she said. "I'll have to accompany you back outside the line, and you'll have to go through again. But it's not busy; you should be fine."

And that's how I found myself shaking water out of a snow globe into a trash can in the John Wayne Airport.

I lost a little glitter, but, the process went as smoothly as possible. As I showed my ID and boarding pass to yet another agent, who was at the front of the line, I felt I owed her an explanation why I was passing through a second time. "I got stopped for a snow globe," I said. "So I emptied it. I guess it makes sense."

"No it doesn't," she said, with a candor I didn't expect from a TSA employee. "They sell 'em right here in the airport."

Found in Closet: part one of four

I've never seen this John Larroquette Show leather backpack before. There's got to be someone out there who would benefit from this backpack.

Sharp Advertising?

Just saw a commercial for Sharp Aquos LCD TVs. The gist of it: You'd have to be a physics professor to select a TV these days; luckily, the star of the commercial is a physics professor. Scrambling to the Internet, I learned that he is indeed a professor of physics—Gerard Fasel of Pepperdine.

Now, OK, I'll grant the physics professor a little extra cred in the world of technology (less so than a professor of electrical engineering, but much more than, oh, let's say…me).

However, when it comes to the crisp, vivid colors that I might look for in an LCD television, I'd rather the commercial spokesperson not be someone who appears to be AN ALBINO.

So, color me cynical.

Supermarket Finds

Via cellphone, my friend Graham sent me this photo:


Graham says: "Made with real bits of baby seal!"

Son of a box!

I think the thing I like most about the terrible movies they show on airplanes is when they overdub offensive words. It's totally inconsistent: sometimes they substitute a milder version of the same word, even if it doesn't match the lips; other times they put in a word that matches the lips, even if it makes no sense. For example, on today's flight "son of a bitch" came up twice. The first time: "son of a box". The second: "son of a bastard". I think these were the only two times I laughed out loud.

The Gipper

Last night, during the RNC, there was a video tribute to Ronald Reagan. Not once, but twice the voiceover intoned, "President Ronald Reagan never forgot who he was."

Airport Security Blows

I only fly a few times a year. So a recent visit to Newark Airport was my first encounter with the Smiths Detection Sentinel II. In Googling the machine later, I learned that it is able to analyze microscopic particles off of people for traces of explosives or narcotics. At the time, though, all I knew was to step on the two yellow footprints. A robot voice spoke. And then jets of air shot out at me from both sides. It was kind of fun.

Stepping out, I said to the agent on duty, "Next time I'll get the hot wax."

He did not respond.

So, either:
—My comment wasn't amusing
—He's heard a variation of it a million times
—Airport security is no laughing matter. (Even in the pre-9/11 years, I got hassled at the Seattle Airport for taking a photo of a sign that said that joking wasn't permitted.)

Regardless, my feelings were hurt. And I am extra vulnerable when separated from my belt and shoes.